


Binding the Galaxy Together

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Horror, Humorous Ending, Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Star Wars: The Last Jedi Fix-It, The Force Is Weird (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28481487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Luke Skywalker's presence on Ahch-To is the only thing keeping an eldritch abomination from devouring the entire universe. Rey knows exactly how to help.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Genuary 2021





	Binding the Galaxy Together

"You need to leave."

"What?"

Luke Skywalker, dressed in entirely white, crossed his arms over his chest and stared Rey down. "You need to leave," he repeated. "It's not safe for you to be here. If you're not careful, you're going to completely destabilize everything."

"What are you talking about?" Rey said, bewildered, unable to bring herself to withdraw the lightsaber hilt she had just thrust in his face. This was not how their meeting was supposed to go. "Look, your sister Leia sent me. She needs your help! The whole galaxy needs you--"

"And that is _precisely_ why I am staying here. To make sure there continues to _be_ a galaxy," Master Skywalker snapped. "You're strong in the Force. Can't you feel it?"

"Feel what?" It was cold here on Ahch-To, Rey thought, suppressing a shiver, but that was just the wind--wasn't it?

He sighed and gestured to a mossy patch of rocks nearby. "I can see this is going to take a while. Sit down and I'll explain."

***

"What do you know about the Force, Rey of Jakku?" Master Skywalker said as he settled himself beside her after the necessary introductions were complete.

"It's a power that Jedi have?" Rey ventured. "It lets you do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. You know--lifting rocks, making things float, that sort of thing."

Master Skywalker screwed up his face as if her words pained him. "The Force does not belong to the Jedi. It's the energy that binds everything in the galaxy together. Nothing would exist without it. It's a river that sustains and connects all life, but not everything within it is... friendly to us."

"What do you mean?"

He waved his mechanical hand at her. "Reach out with your feelings and see for yourself."

Rey did as she was bid, groping in the darkness behind her eyelids after the same flowing potential she had experienced on Starkiller Base when the lightsaber had flown from her hand. "The Force," she whispered. "I feel it--"

"Good," Master Skywalker said. "Now reach out--just a little further--"

Her eyes remained closed but Rey as followed the flow, images appeared in her mind, as if her spirit had broken free from her body and was hovering above the island. The sense of coldness deepened.

Rey edged closer to the source of the chill. Its source was the eastern edge of the island, where the rocky cliffs met the sea. There was a depression--a hole carved in the rocks on the eastern edge of the island. And inside it--

Rey shrieked, as something dark and shadowy lunged for her. She snapped back into her body, slamming into the mossy slope at her back, still screaming as Master Skywalker stared down at her in surprise and annoyance.

"Quiet, or you'll wake it _up_ ," he hissed.

"What _is_ that?" Rey demanded, hauling herself back upright again and rubbing her hands over her exposed arms in a vain effort to warm herself. "There's something there--underneath the island. It's _calling_ to me--"

"Resist it!" Master Skywalker shouted. He raised a hand in the direction of the abyss and _pushed_ outward. The coldness vanished as quickly as it had come, though Rey's teeth were still chattering.

Master Skywalker stared at her, his fierce expression softening as he offered her his cloak, which she gratefully accepted.

"You see what I mean?" he said. "I'm the only one left who can keep that thing contained."

"Is that why Kylo Ren wants to find this place?" Rey said, as she wrapped the cloak tighter around herself. "He said he was looking for you--"

Master Skywalker shook his head. "This was never about me--although I'm sure my nephew would enjoy the opportunity to 'put me in my place. But if he were to set that thing in the cave free, it would destroy us all."

"But how did it--get here?"

He sighed. "Millennia ago, a hole was torn in the fabric of reality, allowing a creature to come though that... shouldn't. It can't be killed, but dozens of Jedi Knights worked together to bind it before it devoured everything in its path. They succeeded, but at great cost, and they built this place to keep watch over the rift and ensure sure it would never wake again.

"Then the purge came and the Jedi vanished. One by one, the ancient bindings wavered and the creature broke free. I was able to contain it, but it requires all my strength and concentration to do so. If I were to walk away, well--" Master Skywalker looked away. "You saw what happened just now. It would be like that, only a million times worse."

There was a moment of stunned silence as Rey processed this. "Maybe I can help?" she volunteered at last.

"If you want to help me, go back to the Resistance and tell my sister the truth. Whatever fight she's in, she's on her own. I cannot help her anymore."

"But they need you!" Rey protested. " _I_ need you! I even brought you your lightsaber!" she added, gesturing to the weapon in her lap.

He shook his head. "Keep it. Lightsabers don't work on that thing. Besides"--he patted his belt--"I have one of my own."

Rey stared at him in stunned silence, unable to think of anything coherent to say.

***

"Chewie, how do you patch a hole in the space-time continuum?"

The Wookiee pilot growled as he looked up from the repair that he was doing on the _Millennium Falcon_ 's sublight engines. [Is that his excuse now? That's original.]

"Yes, I _know_ it's ridiculous, but that's what he _said_." Rey rubbed her head, remembering the _wrongness_ emanating from the cave, and shuddered. "Problem is, there _is_ something evil here; I felt it."

Artoo-Detoo piped in with a query of his own.

"I don't _know_ how to fix it, that's why I'm asking," Rey said. "You're a repair droid--what do you think?"

Artoo held up his welding torch and beeped.

Rey smiled in spite of herself. "I wish it were that easy."

[What about this?] Chewbacca said, holding up a familiar object in one hand.

Artoo snickered.

Rey's eyes widened as realization dawned. "That's _brilliant_!" she cried, snatching it out of his hands and stalking away down the corridor with a whoop. "Be right back!"

Artoo and Chewbacca exchanged looks.

[Is that really going to work?] the astromech said.

Chewbacca shrugged. [Worth a shot.]

Even Artoo couldn't argue with that.

***

There was nothing out of the ordinary at first about the cave. It was dark and cold and damp, yes, but that was to be expected for an underground cavern carved by wind and water from the island's bones. Yet as Rey wended her way into the depths, her skin pimpled from the chill, the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she had to fight rising terror with every step forward.

The Force pressed against her, stifling and heavy--more than capable of drowning her if she refused to heed its warnings. She kept going anyway.

The sands of Jakku were filled with predators--some sentient, others far less so--and Rey was well-acquainted with the feeling of being watched from a distance while she traveled. Whatever was imprisoned down here might be sleeping, but it was still aware of her, as if her presence was enough to disturb its dreams.

A rumbling noise echoed in the distance. Was that the ocean waves outside crashing against the rocks? Or was it the creature breathing--?

 _The first time I saw it, I thought it was my own reflection in a mirror_ , Master Skywalker had said.

She'd asked him how he'd known it wasn't.

A long pause. _Too many teeth,_ he'd said at last.

Rey checked to make sure the roll of bonding tape was still on her belt next to Master Skywalker's lightsaber. Chewbacca's flippant suggestion had sounded a lot more plausible back in the _Falcon_ with all the wires pulled out of the wall while he and Artoo did the engine repair. Now that she was down in the cave, it seemed ludicrously inadequate--mundane, even--to the task at hand.

But she'd come to Ahch-To with a mission: to bring Luke Skywalker back to the Resistance. One way or another, she was going to complete it. And if that meant attempting this improbable repair job--so be it.

Light streamed down from the ceiling up ahead - there was another opening to the outside a few meters above. As Rey passed beneath it, a glob of viscous fluid dripped down and splashed her face. She wiped it off her cheek in disgust, glancing upward as she did so--only to find herself staring into a light so bright that it hurt her eyes and made her head spin, a light that was definitely not of this world.

There was a hole carved out of the rock that shouldn't be there, and that went to no place on this or any other world. Did it lead to empty space? Some other dimension? Rey had no idea, and she had no intention of finding out.

Fortunately, the cavern wasn't very big, and the tear itself was along the edge of the wall, making it relatively easy to get to. Leaping from rock to rock as if this were just another wrecked Star Destroyer on Jakku, Rey clambered her way within reach of the twisted portal.

The sensation of being smothered was almost overwhelming up close. Breathing shallowly through her nose, Rey pulled the tape loop off her belt and slowly stretched a section across the lower edge of the opening. The section over the void appeared to be just as solid as the part affixed to actual rock, even though there was nothing obvious for it to attach _to_.

As she pressed down on the patch to test it, it rippled beneath her hands and then was solid again. Rey yanked her hand away and waited, her heart pounding. But all was quiet.

Sweat dripped down her spine despite the chill as she contemplated her own precarious position and her limited supply of bonding tape. With any luck, she wasn't trapping whatever it was in the cave with her.

She got two more strips of tape over the lower half of the opening without incident. The third one snagged on something under her hands and tore. Curious, Rey put her hand down on what looked like empty space, only to yank her hand back with a cry as something sharp sliced through her palm. "Ow!"

A few drops of blood dripped onto the ground below her before she managed to wrap the wound up with a chunk of her tunic. The stain spread out across the sand, contrasting sharply against the rocks.

_I have a bad feeling about this--_

With a roar, something lunged through the opening towards her. Rey dodged just in time, but lost her footing in the process, rolling off her perch and onto the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of her, but she ducked and rolled to the side despite the pain lancing through her shoulder, too keyed up on adrenaline to register the injury.

Her initial impression of a hole in the universe was true enough--from a certain point of view. Now it was clear that whatever had come through the opening _was_ the opening itself, like a distended puppet given new form by the contours of the hand that controlled it. Still connected to the opening by wings of that awful light, the creature dropped to the ground and churned over the rocks where Rey's blood had fallen, as if reveling in the contact.

It was humanoid in shape now, growing more and more solid with every second. 'Humanoid' was a relative term, of course--swathes of its body both there and not-there. 'There' was bad enough. 'Not-there' was worse.

Too many _eyes_. A writhing mass of blue-white flames so cold they _burned--_ worse than the snows and howling winds of Starkiller Base--and devoured everything in existence.

It looked like her.

 _It's mirroring me_ , Rey realized with growing horror. _It knows me now._ _It's tasted my blood._ Her stomach twisted as she realized how Master Skywalker must have lost the flesh on his mechanical right hand.

As if sensing her thoughts, the figure looked up for the first time, stared her directly in the eyes, and smiled.

_Too many teeth._

The creature started towards her with a slow, steady shamble that was worse than any lunge. Rey swore and reached for her lightsaber, knowing that it wouldn't do any good, yet determined not to go down without a fight--

A rock slammed through the creature's back, passing _through_ it instead of bounding back. Rey ducked just in time to avoid the impact herself. Seconds later, a green lightsaber spun through the air, slicing in a wide arc through what would be the creature's torso before returning to the hands of its master.

"I told you not to come down here. Now look what you've done," Luke Skywalker said, surveying the scene in disgust.

"Master Skywalker!" Rey shouted.

"Get out of here!"

"I can't! I have to finish closing the hole!"

Master Skywalker looked up, registering the partially sealed opening for the first time. "Is that _bonding tape_?"

"YES!" Rey shouted. "If you can push this thing back through, I'll deal with it up once and for all! I just need some more-- _time--_ "

Master Skywalker rolled his eyes, but he obeyed, extending his left palm out towards the creature, his eyes closed in concentration as he pushed out with the Force. Reality grew dense and heavy around him; the wrongness retreating in the wake of his unshakeable reality.

With a hissing snarl, the creature retreated. Less and less humanoid with every second, it pulled back into the hole like a tubesnake returning to its burrow. Master Skywalker rose into the air as he pressed after it, as the creature stepped one clawed limb through the opening, then another, and another until it was gone.

"Hurry," he shouted, gesturing at Rey to finish the job.

Rey was ready for him. With a few swift applications of bonding tape, the hole was completely sealed, without even a crack of that awful light visible anymore. 

"There!" she gasped, slumping back against the wall in exhaustion mingled with pride as she contemplated at her handiwork. "We did it."

"So we did," Master Skywalker admitted. He gently lowered himself to the ground and stared up at the now perfectly ordinary ceiling in disgust. "I can't believe that worked."

"Why not? Bonding tape fixes _everything_ ," Rey said. "So you're free to help the Resistance now, right?"

He groaned and slapped his hand over his forehead. "If you think that will hold," he said, eyeing the patch floating in midair with obvious skepticism.

"Oh, it'll hold," Rey assured him, with a confidence she didn't quite feel.

But she slapped a few extra pieces on top, just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to say where my brain gets ideas, but I strongly suspect that this piece is the direct result of reading _The Hollow Places_ by T. Kingfisher late at night, and wondering just how eldritch alien beings would even work in the Star Wars universe. 
> 
> Also, that scene in _The Force Awakens_ when Rey uses bonding tape - the GFFA equivalent of duct tape - to patch the _Millennium Falcon_. Why _not_ use it on a space-time rift?


End file.
